Sachsenhausen concentration camp is in the former East
Germany and lies approx 40km North of Berlin. The most recent memorial (pictured bottom right). which was designed and installed after the fall
of the Soviet regime and the reunification of Germany depicts emaciated bodies
holding up a fallen figure, and although it is larger than life it shows
weakness and frailty. This monument depicts the pathetic hero, a notion which the totalitarian regimes disliked and
so it only came into existence after the fall of communism in Germany.
It provides a stark contrast to the monument pictured bottom left
that was erected immediately after the liberation of the camp by the Russian
Army which is in the Soviet (anti pathetic) style depicting strong, muscular
bodies (even on the figure representing a camp survivor), sharp angles and
larger than life figures. It would seem
that this monument was erected not so much as to remember the victims of the
Holocaust but to celebrate the strength of the Red Army and the Communist
Russian liberators. Is it then the case
that the former monument there is the embodiment of ‘all that was worth
forgetting – not remembering?’ [1]
] Young, Memory and the end of
the monument, p.64.
 Soviet memorial |  Memorial at the gas chambers |